Mommin' It Up since 2004!
I don’t want to be needed, but I don’t want my children to stop needing me.
I want to be left alone, but I don’t want to be alone.
I want to give, but I want to have.
I want to succeed, but I don’t want to strive.
And of course, I want to be content.
What do you want?
I do not believe it is a coincidence that the subject of pride has come up for discussion several times for me lately, with several different people, in several different environments. It’s not coincidence, because it’s something I need to think about, and work on. It is something I am sure, that God has been speaking to me about.
I believe that pride is the number one thing that keeps us from forming true relationships with each other. And by “us”, I mean women, although I think it applies to all genders, races, and creeds. Pride is the shiny veneer over a scratched dining table, the thickly-applied concealer over a blemish, the cleverly-placed accessory that covers an ugly scar.
And it’s the Berlin Wall that forms between what could be beautiful relationships. Its size is a wonder, its strength, its mass seemingly impenetrable. It is closely and vigilantly guarded.
It needs to come down.
As I mentioned before, at BlissDom I told Lotus how much her blogging about her depression had meant to me. Her courage to admit her struggles, her realness, her acknowledgment that sometimes she is not okay, gave me the strength to write about my own battle.
How much could we help each other, if we would only ask for help for ourselves? Maybe you call a friend and just ask her to listen as you vent about your frustrations as a mom. And she learns that it is okay to have those frustrations. To admit them. To know she is not alone. Maybe you confess that you have doubts about faith, marital problems, feelings of worthlessness, fears, financial problems, worries that you are screwing up your kids. Maybe you just say, “I need you to take the kids for a couple hours.” Maybe you do this, you give someone the opportunity to help you, to listen to you, to love you as you truly are, and not for how you have been presenting yourself, and you change a life. Maybe two lives. Maybe you blog about it and you change dozens.
Maybe you win yourself one true, intimate friendship. Maybe you become the answer to someone’s prayer.
Maybe you take a sledgehammer to the Berlin Wall. Make a hole big enough for someone else to escape through, to find freedom.
Maybe you find it yourself. Only one way to find out.
Yesterday we took a very big step in our family, one Bobby and I had been *very* nervous about – we got Sophie a big girl bed.
“What?” you say? “Sophie has been three years old for almost three months, and she was not in a big girl bed? SCANDAL!”
It’s true, you see, we kept Sophie in a crib because she slept all night, every night, and we were WAY afraid to mess with that. However, she is three. And we want to move her towards being a “big girl”. And since she put the ix-nay on the otty-pay a couple weeks ago, we are starting with the big girl bed.
We said “bye-bye” to her crib after she got up yesterday. We skipped nap time as Daddy was still working on getting her furniture re-arranged. When we showed her the bed, she pretty much ignored it. She wouldn’t sit on it, because I think she was afraid we were going to make her go to sleep!
At bedtime, we read her books and then I left the room as I always do, while Daddy sang to her and snuggled her. I watched on our video monitor as he left the room.
She was out of bed before he even got downstairs. D’oh!
He went back up and put her back in bed.
Ditto. She was really “exploring her new space” – getting on and off both sides of the bed, trying to get her bedroom door open…
This continued for a while, until Bobby just waited outside her door. When he heard her get up, he opened the door and told her to get back in bed. She always obeyed, and never fussed! Finally he was able to come back downstairs and watch “Sophie theatre” with me. We watched as she got up one last time. This time, she got UNDER the bed! And proceeded to just LAY there. We giggled at her for a couple of minutes, until we decided we really didn’t want her to spend her first night in a big girl bed UNDER the big girl bed. So Bobby went back one more time, and tucked her in again. This time, she gave up and went to sleep IN her bed. This was about 10 pm. I wasn’t sure what the night would bring, but we did not hear a PEEP out of her until she woke up at 8:20 this morning!!! I was SO PROUD and grateful, I nearly couldn’t take it.
My baby is a big girl!
I love her SO MUCH!